Red Dead Re­demp­tion a crown­ing achieve­ment

ROCKSTAR has cul­ti­vated a rep­u­ta­tion for them­selves that cen­ters around their metic­u­lous, of­ten neu­rotic at­ten­tion to the min­u­tae de­tails of a game that co­a­lesce in to a liv­ing, breath­ing game­play ex­pe­ri­ence. Pre­vi­ously, Grand Theft Auto V en­joyed the dis­tinc­tion of be­ing Rockstar’s mag­num opus in terms of how out­ra­geously de­tailed the game was. Now, there can be no deny­ing that Rockstar’s lat­est ef­fort, Red Dead Re­demp­tion 2, is the de­vel­oper’s crown­ing achieve­ment.

For the first few hours of Red Dead Re­demp­tion 2, you will feel like you are play­ing a con­tin­u­a­tion of 2010’s Red Dead Re­demp­tion (in terms of game­play, at least, as the lat­est re­lease in the se­ries is a pre­quel). This feel­ing will soon fade as you be­gin to take in the breath­tak­ing scope of Rockstar’s lat­est Wild West epic.

Red Dead Re­demp­tion 2 casts you as Arthur Mor­gan, a typ­i­cally suave out­law liv­ing in 1899 - a time when Amer­ica was on the cusp of ram­pant in­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion and the cow­boy found them­selves a dy­ing breed.

Af­ter the pro­logue sec­tion con­cludes, the open world rev­e­las it­self to you, and what an open world it is. Beau­ti­ful, am­bi­tious and ground­break­ing are just some of the end­less su­perla­tives that can be ap­plied to this world. From waste­land plateaus to dense forests, from dusty ranches to bustling cities. Red Dead Re­demp­tion 2 pays homage to the vast spec­trum of en­vi­ron­ments the turn of the 20th Cen­tury had to of­fer.

An­other thing that Rockstar have to be com­mended for is in­tro­duc­ing ‘ busy-work’ to a game with­out mak­ing it te­dious, which is some­thing that games in the sur­vival genre have been try­ing to do for the past 5-or-so years with­out very much luck at all. Arthur must con­stantly shave, wash and eat. Bod­ies must be man­u­ally looted, large an­i­mals that you have hunted must be strapped to the back of your horse if you wish to sell them. Ex­tra ri­fles and such must be stored in your sad­dle­bags. While this sounds like te­dium in­car­nate, none of this truly en­roaches on the game­play ex­pe­ri­ence, only serv­ing to even deeper im­merse your­self in this beau­ti­ful and ex­pan­sive world.

Play­ing 2010’s Red Dead Re­demp­tion will cer­tainly cause you to put two-and-two to­gether a lot more of­ten in its se­quel but it is by no means nec­es­sary to en­joy this ex­pe­ri­ence.

If you own a PS4 or Xbox One and are not afraid of be­ing to­tally con­sumed by this game for at least the length of the main story (about 50 hours) then just go for it - you will not be dis­ap­pointed.

If you’re not afraid of be­ing to­tally con­sumed by a game for long pe­ri­ods then you won’t be dis­ap­pointed with Red Dead Re­demp­tion 2.